Trump cuts Columbia’s grants over handling of student protests: Should he include universities that violated academic freedom?
March 10 | Posted by mrossol | 1st Amendment, Cancel Culture, Prasad, Science, Transparency[non]Great question by Dr Prasad. Yes, there should be consequences for muffling speech, of almost any kind. (This includes speech against Israel). mrossol
|
|
Trump’s NIH and federal government is cutting contracts to Columbia over their handling of the middle east protests.
 |
Many online are debating whether or not this action works to improve on campus conditions for students, if it targets the administrators who fell short, or unrelated faculty, and many other related questions. Yet, one thing is clear: it is a strong message and will surely make the administrators in question panic, suffer, and seek legal remedy. Even if grants ultimately reinstated, in part or whole, It is a powerful motivation for universities to do better on all future protests, balancing freedom of expression with safety.
Should a similar action be extended to universities which actively worked to constrain academic freedom? Stanford’s faculty senate censured Scott Atlas for saying schools should remain open, lockdowns were barbaric, and kids shouldn’t mask.
 |
Stanford’s medicine chair directed Prof. Eran Bendavid to stop speaking publicly against lockdowns.
 |
|
Pitt removed Norman Wang from its EP program directorship because he didn’t support race-motivated affirmative action
 |
I am aware of dozens of additional examples of faculty losing teaching roles, being denied promotion, or simply being told to ‘be quiet’ for signing the Great Barrington Declaration, being critical of masking, or lockdowns or vaccine mandates.
In 100% of these cases, the view that was punished was the view that tended to be held by conservatives— though ironically, there is nothing about masking a two year old that makes it a liberal position— it just happened to fall there because of Trump derangement syndrome, i.e. since he was nonchalant about masking, the left had to do it as hard as possible.
How can NIH operationalize this proposal? Right now there is an NIH hotline and submission form for complaints about sexual harassment or fraud in research. These are investigated and grants can be cancelled or pulled. This mechanism should expanded to concerns that faculty were punished or told to remain quiet on policy issues. Universities with high rates of offenses could then have grant funding revoked.
Universities are not going to do the right thing without accountability. They are not going to foster a culture of debate on issues that fall on right/left lines because too many faculty members on the left view the debate itself as ‘violence.’ Small groups of faculty label views they dislike as ‘dangerous misinformation’ even as those views were correct. Many faculty stopped discussing these issues publicly because of retaliation in their jobs. Short of being fired— being denied the opportunity to teach, to present one’s work, to lecture, and being stripped of titles— is unjust retaliation and was conducted by many universities.
Stripping even a handful of institutions of large numbers of federal grants will wake up administrators. They do not yet understand that their conduct is precisely the reason why public trust is in the toilet. A stronger message is needed. I offer this suggestion only because I believe that in the long run, universities would be better off if they foster and encourage debate, and allow faculty to hold a range of ideas. And because I worry that if they don’t do that, they will increasingly become irrelevant.
You’re currently a free subscriber to Vinay Prasad’s Observations and Thoughts. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.